Today Congressman Jason Chaffetz shared a photo of a foot and ankle on Instagram and Facebook, along with a message about upcoming surgery.“Almost 12 years ago, I shattered several bones in my foot which required 14 screws and a metal plate to repair. Yes, I wish I could say I was cliff diving in Mexico but the truth is I fell off a ladder while repairing something in my garage. The University of Utah doctors now recommend immediate surgery to remove all the hardware or I could be at risk for serious infection. My recovery is expected to take three to four weeks.”

Chaffetz has had a busy couple of weeks.

April 19: Announces he will not seek re-election.

April 20: Announces that he may not finish his term.

April 21: Announces that he is already seeking a job in the private sector, possibly in television.

April 26: Announces that he must leave immediately to have surgery on a 12-year-old foot injury. He will be gone from Congress for 3-4 weeks.

Chaffetz, as head of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, planned in October to pursue Oversight investigations into Hillary Clinton, expected to win the presidency. The Washington Post reported on October 26, 2016 that Chaffetz expected to have multiple investigations beginning soon.

“Chaffetz, too, views Clinton as a lucky candidate whose past will catch up with her after the polls close.‘She’s not getting a clean slate,’ he said. ‘It’s not like the State Department was bending over backwards to help us understand what was going on. We’ve got document destruction. We’ve got their own rogue system. We’ve got classified information out the door. We’ve got their foundation doing who knows what. I mean, it took them four years just to release her schedule.’"

Hillary Clinton did not win the election. Donald Trump became president. Chaffetz, a Republican and a member of the Trump transition team, has resisted calls to investigate members of the Trump team for ethical violations.

The Democrats on the Oversight Committee have been requesting action on the many financial conflicts of interest of President Trump and aides Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and Kellyanne Conway. Chaffetz attempted to pressure Walter Shaub, Jr., head of the Office of Government Ethics (a federal agency providing guidance on ethics to the executive branch), into dropping his insistence that President Trump should divest of his businesses before his inauguration.

Yesterday several news outlets reported that the White House rejected a request from the Oversight Committee for documents related to the vetting of former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn.

Chaffetz played a role in the "October surprise" that helped catapult Trump into the presidency. he posted a message to Twitter on October 28 announcing that FBI Director James Comey had reopened an investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. Comey closed that investigation November 3. Clinton's popularity in polls declined after the announcement of the reopened investigation, and did not fully recover after the investigation was closed.

FBI personnel generally do not comment publicly on open investigations.

NBC News reported tonight on a violent altercation between two groups on the streets of Berkeley. One group was purportedly there to defend free speech, while the opposing group's goal was to fight fascism. Berkeley police arrested 21 people, and several people went to the hospital. The rally was described by NBC Bay Area as a clash between pro-Trump and anti-Trump protesters.

Studying the photos and videos of the event, however, a different picture of the event emerges. Examining archived Twitter messages sent over the last several weeks makes it clear that this event was a staged performance designed to foment discord and distract from other events in the news.​A photo from the event shows the costume of the “pro-Trump” group. They clearly came prepared for a violent, theatrical clash.

Source: Christie Smith/NBC Bay Area

This is not the ordinary garb of a peaceful rally participant. More photos from NBC Bay Area show that there were two distinct groups of combatants - the pro-Trump "free speech" defenders, dressed like the person above, and the "anti-fascists," dressed in black with balaclavas over their faces.

Source: NBC Bay Area

NBC Bay Area​ shows photos of the altercations at the event. A close examination of these photos, and a study of some deleted posts from several Twitter accounts, shows that the event was a theatrical event designed to confuse the public and distract from other events in the weekend news.

A character who calls himself Based Stick Man (real name Kyle Chapman), posted messages to Twitter that were deleted (likely today). A few of the messages, shown below, make it clear that this person had plans for turning this event into something other than a peaceful rally.

​The story becomes more complex. Twitter messages purportedly from "antifa" (anti-fascist) groups show a threat to the "free speech" group that must be defended against.

Add to this the message from early this morning showing that the event would be livestreamed on Facebook, and one might begin to wonder if someone was planning for a violent clash that could be propaganda for increased tensions between left and right.

Source: Caroline O./Twitter

This kind of violent public display, which appears to be orchestrated to mislead people into thinking there is more political conflict in California than their really is, has cost the city of Berkeley a lot of money. City spokesperson Matthai Chakko has described it as "a significant cost, there's no doubt." Berkeleyside has reported that most of those arrested at the March 4 event were not Berkeley residents. (Kyle Chapman is reported to be from San Francisco.)

The "free speech event" that turns violent provide a classic example of a Russian Intelligence Service technique called provokatsiya (provocation). It is designed to confuse and distract. (Today's Tax Marches throughout the country, in which thousands of middle-class taxpayers showed their desire for President Trump to release his tax returns, got less coverage because of the "violent" free speech rally in Berkeley.) Whether these rabble-rousers are actively working for Russian interests, or are just causing trouble out of a pathetic need for attention, they are certainly accomplishing a goal of the RIS.

​Similar violent events have occurred since President Trump began his candidacy. There was a pro-Trump rally in Huntington Beach, California, on March 25, which also seemed to have staged violence. An event in Sacramento took place on the same weekend, with no reported violence. Sacramento police reported the crowd size to be about 250 people, according to Fox 40 News.

John Schindler, a national security expert and contributor to ​The Observer, has described the RIS technique of provokatsiya this way:

“Provocation is complicated, but at its most basic involves secret acts to confuse and dismay your enemy … Taking control of your enemies in secret and encouraging them to do things that discredit them and help you. You plant your own agents provocateurs and flip legitimate activists, turning them to your side…"

Fortunately, the attempts to discredit the left by associating protesters with violence is not catching on in the United States. Understanding the techniques that some groups use to distract and confuse, and a maintaining a healthy dose of skepticism, can help us know what to believe and what to recognize as absurdnosti - absurdity.

UPDATED 4/10/17A Russian computer programmer, hacker, and developer of botnets has been arrested in Barcelona, Spain, according to a spokeman for the Russian embassy.

According to a spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department, the U.S. criminal case against Pyotr Levashov is under seal, so details are not available.

According to the New York Daily News, Russian television reported that Levashov was suspected of being involved in hacking attacks connected to interference in the U.S. 2016 election.

​Pyotr Levashov is also known by other names: Peter North and Peter Severa (which means “north” in Russian). According to Brian Krebs, who writes the blog Krebs on Security, Peter Severa/Pyotr Levashov is responsible for the Kelihos botnet, a spam engine that infected 40,000 PCs, and the Waledac botnet, which infected hundreds of thousands of PCs and sent out tens of billions of junk emails that promoted online pharmacies. (Many of us have received these junk emails, advertising a variety of sexual enhancement drugs.) According to Krebs, Microsoft used “novel legal techniques” to seize control and shut down both botnets. Waledac was stopped in 2010 and Kelihos was defeated in fall of 2016.

According to anti-spam activist Spamhaus.org, Severa/Levashov was the partner of Alan Ralsky, who was convicted of wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, and violating the CAN-SPAM Act, related to a penny-stock manipulation scheme, in 2009. Severa/Levashov was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department in a related and ongoing investigation.

Some reports suggest that Severa/Levashov is connected to the FSB, the Russian security service that is the successor to the Soviet KGB. Unconfirmed reports also link him to Vnesheconombank (VEB), a Russian government-owned development bank.

In January another Russian hacker, whose name was given as Lisov, was arrested by Spanish police. It was reported that he was wanted by the United States for leading a financial fraud network.

Another hacker suspected of involvement in the hacking related to the 2016 U.S. election, 29 year-old Yevgeny Nikulin, was arrested in Prague, Czech Republic in December 2016.

The Atlantic Council is an international affairs think tank which promotes constructive leadership and engagement in international affairs. The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab analyzed the spread on Twitter of a false story alleging that the Syria chemical weapons attack on Tuesday, April 4 was a false-flag attack. This is a summary of the DFR Lab analysis.

Tuesday, April 4, there was an attack on the town of Khan Sheikhun in northern Syria. The victims, mostly civilians, appeared to have been exposed to Sarin gas, which survivors said had been delivered by warplanes.

The same day, Al-Masdar News, a website which supports the Syrian government, published an article that claimed that the attack was not a chemical weapons attack by the government. The article was written by Paul Antonopolous, a frequent contributor to RT, the Russian state-sponsored news outlet.

Al-Masdar News published this photo from the White Helmets, the aid organization nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016. The website claimed that this picture called into question the claim that sarin gas had been used, since the aid workers would not be able to care for patients without gloves.

Photo credit: White Helmets/Al-Masdar News

The website went on to call into question Twitter messages sent by a doctor who claimed to be on the scene. The article quoted a Twitter message from @WithinSyriaBlog which quoted a post from Orient TV, which claimed that there were reports of chemical attacks in the area reported a day early.

Over the next two days, the Al-Masdar News story was picked up by a number of pro-Russia and anti-U.S. websites.

At least three conspiracy website picked up the story and published it verbatim:

GlobalResearchCA

Information Clearinghouse

The Lifeboat News

Several pro-Kremlin sites known for publishing fake news quoted from the original Al Masdar News story:

The Duran

IWB

The Russophile (also known as Russia News Now)

New Euro-Med DK

MINA

​Several other sites wrote their own stories, relying heavily on the original Al Masdar story:

Conservative Refocus

Friends of Syria

InfoWars

Blacklisted News

Before It’s News

21st Century Wire

The most influential site in the U.S. to pick up the story was InfoWars, a site very popular among the alt-right. On April 5, according to the DFR Lab analysis, "Infowars ran a long article claiming that the White Helmets — which it presented as funded by billionaire George Soros — were in fact behind the attack and saying that the attack had 'all the hallmarks of a false flag.'"

InfoWars clearly relied heavily on the original story, either using the original or one of the stories that relied on it as the source. InfoWars published the story on the website, and also Tweeted it and it was reTweeted more than 300 times. Author Alex Jones also Tweeted the story, and it was reTweeted from him over 400 times.

The biggest boost to the story came from a Twitter account called @magicpoledancer, which warned President Trump against intervention and used the hashtag #SyriaHoax.

Source: Twitter/DFL Lab

This account was created in March 2017, and the first Tweet came from the account April 4. While this account only had 14 followers, the Tweet got 92 reTweets. The profile of the account contains a quote from Russian author Bakunin: "Capitalism and communism are two sides of the same coin."

The hashtag #SyriaHoax was picked up by alt-right video blogger Mike Cernovich on April 6. It is unclear whether Cernovich picked up the hashtag from @poledancer or came up with it himself. He likely picked up the story from Alex Jones and InfoWars, since an April 5 Tweet asserted that he would soon be meeting with Jones, and a March 2 Tweet suggested that he believes that Jones deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The hashtag quickly went viral, largely due to accounts that appear to be computer-generated "bot" accounts.

Source: Twitter/DFL Lab

The suspected bot accounts reTweeted the story and the hashtag more than 3,000 times in 6 hours on April 6. The hashtag received a total of 20,000 posts over that time. The 40 suspected bot accounts were responsible for about 15 percent of the total activity over that time.

Several "sleeper" accounts appear to have been activated to help boost the hashtag and make it go viral. These are accounts that were formed prior to March or April of 2017, but the majority of their total activity came over a period of a few hours and was all related to a specific hashtag.

The DFR Lab Analysis concludes:

"What is noteworthy is the way in which the regime’s response, launched on a site which has repeatedly amplified Assad’s messaging, was translated rapidly and directly into coverage on alt-right websites, most obviously Infowars.In the process, the alt-right sites used the same arguments, backed up with the same evidence, and taken from the same sources, as the Al-Masdar original. This was not a case of the alt-right arguing on behalf of the Assad regime as much as amplifying it."

Yandex is a Russian technology company, which operates the largest search engine in Russia, with 65 percent market share. The yandex.ru home page has been ranked the most popular home page in Russia.​It came to my attention today, thanks to Twitter user @Counterchekist and journalist Christo Grozev, that Breitbart, the white nationalist website Steve Bannon used as a platform to promote Donald Trump, has a Russian search engine in its source code.Here is what it looks like.

​A plausible explanation would be that news sites commonly link to popular search engines in other countries. However, I searched a number of website, especially right-wing websites, and found no mention of Yandex:

Daily Caller

Council of Conservative Citizens

Federation for American Immigration Reform

The Guardian

HeatStreet

Fox News

NBC News

CNN

Even the English-language Turkish website Hűrriyet Daily News has no connection to Yandex.Why might the Breitbart website link to a Russian search engine? If you have an idea, please send a message to Reason and Justice.